This right here is the most quintessential advice I’ve ever seen pertaining to making money online and being free.
Every blog I see come up that has any association with motivation, weight lifting, or making money online, I automatically close and never return to.
What most of these guys aren’t realizing is that they aren’t providing motivation or money advice, they are writing vague, actionless “short stories” which are (at their core) vicarious fiction stories about the lives they wish they were living, which in reality are just the lives of Vic, Mike, and Chris.

[…]

If you want to read some good up and coming blogs that aren’t Vic/Mike/Chris rip-off, check out these winners.

You’re joking, right? These are generic red pill / pick-up / travel tales / start a business blogs that have been done ad nauseum and better by a wide range of people from Roosh to Naughty Nomad to Matt Forney etc etc etc.

I’m not going to lie, I’m a little bit…peeved. I don’t really have a better word to describe it. It’s been a tough day to begin with, so I very well might be acting like a little bitch. Regardless, I feel the need to say this.

My blog shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breathe as Victor Pride.

My blog shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breathe as Mike Cernovich.

My blog shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breathe as Good Looking Loser.

My blog shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breathe as Roosh.

My blog shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breathe as Matt Forney.

I’ve never read Naughty Nomad, but I know the name – it’s probably safe to say my blog isn’t on his level, either.

I certainly appreciate the referral and compliments of Connor, but all of the above writers have build vastly superior products to what I’ve built here at This Is Trouble. From what I know, all of them make a full-time living running their blogs. I make enough to buy beer (granted, a decent amount), and that’s about it. Sure, nothing to scoff at in comparison to most bloggers, but it’s really nothing in the grand scheme of things – i.e. paying rent.

Now, something I think is important to note is that flat-out copying content and titles (the domain examples that GLL posted – WOW), is silly. But to an extent, innovation and improvement comes from mimicking a foundation. Kobe Bryant stole plenty of Michael Jordan’s moves. I wouldn’t put him on the level of MJ, but I’d say he’s made a decent career for himself in the process.

Apple has had a dominant share of the smartphone market since the first generation iPhone, but you don’t see Samsung, Microsoft, Google, etc. throwing in the towel and handing them the entire market. Instead, they take the best features of the iPhones, put their own twist on it, and sell it to the market. Having competition creates innovation amongst people.

Not to discredit all that these guys have done, but I’m willing to bet that someday, someone will launch a blog based off of masculinity and self-improvement that will pass all of them. It’s just the nature of the beast, the circle of life, if you will.

So how’s this tie back to me?

Hell if I know.

I still see-saw about my current career situation. I keep telling myself I need to at least give it a couple years. If I’m in a position where I’m 25 years old, shooting up the chain in one of the fastest growing fields in technology – how can I walk away from that?

The answer: cubicles. Legal torture.

Maybe if I get an office with a pretty view, everything would change. Though it probably wouldn’t, because then I’d just have people less intelligent below me, and I’ve get tired of dealing with their shit. In reality, if you want to know what would make me stick around Corporate America, it’d be shorter work days. If I can get all of my work done in four hours, there’s no reason I should have to stick around the rest of the day. And if I can manage to do that, I should be allowed to do those twenty hours (4 hours a day * 5 days a week) in two days, and then have a five day weekend every week. Yeah, then I’d definitely be sticking around.

But, it won’t happen.

This blog? I doubt it’ll ever make me filthy rich. Apparently people in that thread on B&D classify me as a “pick up” blog, but in reality I still consider it a place where I rant about random things in my life, like I’m doing now. I pour my soul on to paper (i.e. WordPress) to clear my mind – sometimes it comes across as great advice to people, sometimes (read: this post) it comes across as word vomit with some entertainment factor. Nearly every post, even if it’s aimed as an actionable advice piece, is inspired by something in my own life. Whether or not I choose to disclose how personal it is to me – or at all – varies on my mood.

I sure as hell don’t consider myself a pick up artist. I was actually just poking fun at The Game the other day in conversation. Those guys were brilliant in their own right, but I much prefer living a balanced life with hobbies and interests as opposed to having women by the cornerstone on which my foundation is built on. Anyone with a little game would recognize that as a recipe for disaster.

I am really proud of my new book, I will say that much, and hope you guys like it too!

If we’re being realistic, I think I have a far better change of being location independent and wealthy off of other projects I’m pursing. I do web design here and there, and my dad and I are working on a truly revolutionary engineering project that has a ton of potential. It’s not something that even remotely fits in the scope of This Is Trouble, but we should have prototypes in July and I’m looking forward to seeing where that goes.

Fuck – see what I mean? This is one of those rants. Time to wrap this up with a final thought that’s been lurking in the back of my mind the whole time…